Prodigal
by MaireadOutlander
Summary: When Ennis's middle daughter, Enid, hears about a man killed in Texas she has an unfounded fear that it might be her father's fishing buddy, Jack. During a weekend at home, she decides to ask her father about Jack, opening both of them up to new and potentially uncomfortable conversations.


"They killed a man in Texas."

Enid raised her head from the poster she was painting, _Lesbians for AIDS Research,_ and looked at her friend Mark, who had been quiet all evening. "What?"

"My cousin goes to Texas A&M and he told me they found a man beaten to death on the highway a few months ago. The cops made up some bullshit story about it being an accident with a tire or something, but my cousin knew of the guy and knew he was probably gay. No one there will talk about it and the school's gay group is thinking of doing a march or something. I just, I've been thinking about it all day."

Enid nodded. Mark was one of the university's most visible gay men and he knew this made him vulnerable, even though both he and Enid sometimes liked to pretend that it didn't. Things were changing, but obviously not enough.

"Was he a student?" Enid asked.

"No. He was older. Maybe forty or close to it. But he was known to the guys on campus as someone who might be up for a date, or not a date, but you know what I mean. I guess he was known to other people that way too."

Enid's breath caught in her chest. She had assumed the man was younger, closer to her and Mark's age and been thinking about how hard that proximity would be for Mark. She had not been prepared for the man to be her father's age and the information hit her surprisingly hard.

"Do you know the man's name?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

"My dad had a fishing buddy from Texas, but it's silly to think it'd be the same person. I don't even know where in Texas he lived. It just came to mind."

"Was his fishing buddy gay?" Mark had never met Enid's father, but, judging by the look on Mark's face, she had apparently given him enough information about her father for Mark to determine that her father wouldn't associate with a gay man, or maybe Mark just assumed that most straight men wouldn't. He was probably right.

"No," Enid said. "I mean, I don't know that he was. I guess, actually, I've always thought he might have been. But I don't want to speak out of turn."

Mark frowned. "Is there something else going on, Enid?"

"No. I'm just thinking about… stuff. Texas is a big state. It probably wasn't my dad's friend." She paused. "Not that that makes it any less terrible." She sighed. "I think I might head back to the dorms. Are you ok, Mark?"

Mark nodded. "Are you?"

"Yeah, yeah. I just have a bit of a headache."

"I can walk you back," Mark said as Enid grabbed her sign. It was past midnight and the campus was dark.

"It's fine."

Mark looked concerned. "Leave the sign here then. I'll meet you at the march with it tomorrow. You're still going, right?"

"Of course," Enid said, putting her still wet—and now slightly dripping—sign back down on the sheets of newspaper she and Mark had laid on his apartment floor. "About the march in Texas," she said. "I don't think it's a great idea. Maybe tell your cousin that. It could be dangerous for any men the guy associated with. And awkward for his family."

"Because it's so terribly embarrassing that their relative was gay?" Mark sounded frustrated. He often accused Enid of harboring shame about her sexuality. She thought the huge sign she had just painted proved him wrong on that front.

"No," she said. "Just, it's a personal thing, right? Not everything has to be political."

"If they killed him because he was gay, it is political."

"Yeah, I know. Listen, I have to go. I'm really not feeling well."

Mark's face softened as he walked over to where Enid stood in the doorway. He put his hand to her forehead, feeling for a fever, then pulled her into a hug, kissing her on the cheek as he let go. "We'll be all right," he said. "We're both careful."

Enid agreed before slipping out the door. As she walked the half mile back to her dorm, she heard a group of men behind her and felt glad she had left her sign behind. She didn't think the men would be able to read it in the dark anyway, but was glad she didn't have to worry about it being illuminated as she passed below every streetlight.

Two years ago, when Enid was sixteen, her father had told her about two men from his hometown, Earl and Rich, who lived together. He told her, in graphic detail, about how men from town had beat Earl with a tire iron, tied a rope to his penis, and dragged him around by it until it ripped clean off.

"Don't tell your sisters this story," he had warned when he was done. "It'd be too much for them."

"Why are you telling it to me then?" she had asked.

"It goes to show you that you have to be careful around men," he had answered.

Enid hadn't understood why this supposed lesson about men and the violence they were capable of wasn't equally applicable to her two sisters, Alma Jr. and Jenny. Then she realized the story wasn't really about that, or wasn't just about men and their violence in general. It was about men and the violence they felt compelled to do to anyone who was different, who threatened them with their strangeness. She supposed her father knew Alma and Jenny weren't quite as "different" as she was.

"Let's go get an ice cream," her father had said, putting an arm around her. "Don't tell your sisters about that either. They'll be jealous."

For the whole ride into town, Enid caught her father glancing at her surreptitiously, checking to see if she had recovered from his story. After the fourth time she caught him looking, she told him to watch the road instead and he winked at her as if it were all a joke. At the ice cream shop, she asked him if he thought what the men had done to Earl was wrong and he paused for a long time before telling her yes.

When Enid was eleven and her parents had just divorced, she and her sisters were visiting their father at his new place when his fishing buddy, Jack, showed up. She watched as they hugged and Jack put his hand on the back of her father's neck. She had never seen a man touch another man that way before. Her father had pulled Jack's hand away, but more gently than she expected. Then he introduced her and her sisters to Jack—for the first and only time—and stood talking to him for a few minutes. As a white pickup drove past, Enid noticed her father look up and follow its movements as if the car or its occupants were catching him doing something dirty or embarrassing even though all he was doing was talking. Then Jack got back in his car and drove away.

Enid thought about all this as the men behind her began to call out to her. She reached into her jacket pocket, feeling the pocket knife she kept there and didn't let go until she made it back to her dorm and shut the door behind her, locking the men outside.

A week later, Enid rode the bus back home for Alma Jr.'s wedding. It had been decided that she would stay with her father the night before the wedding. With Jenny, Alma, and her two younger half-brothers at her mother and step-father's place, there was just no room for her. When the wedding was over and Alma went off to be with her new husband, then Enid would go stay with her mother. Enid knew that Alma and her fiancé, Kurt, were already essentially living together and thought that observing the formality of keeping them apart the night before their wedding was ridiculous, but she had also been excited to spend time with her father and therefore hadn't minded the "no room at the inn" message she got from her mother. Now, however, she was nervous to see him. Despite her repeated—and true—assertions to Mark, and later herself, that Texas was a big state, she couldn't get rid of the feeling that the man killed there was her father's friend, Jack. She wondered if she should ask him about it, knowing he would never freely bring it up with anyone, but also worried about how he might react if she mentioned it. When he picked her up from the bus station, he immediately began asking her about her studies with talk quickly moving to Alma's wedding, relieving Enid—for an hour at least—of having to determine whether or not to broach the subject of Jack.

"You've met this Kurt?" her father asked.

"Yeah."

"And he's a good guy? Good to Alma?"

"He is," Enid said. "She talks more when she's around him too. I'm not sure if he brings Alma out of herself or if he's just so quiet that she has to talk. Not that he's one of those people who doesn't have anything to say. I think he does. He's just contemplative."

"A contemplative roughneck."

"There's such a thing."

"S'pose so."

"Aren't you a contemplative rancher?"

"Nah. I'm just one of those people who doesn't have anything to say. And I'm a ranch-hand, not a rancher."

Enid's father smiled at her, but she saw sadness behind his eyes. She knew he had wanted a ranch, but never been able to afford one. Many of her friends at school had parents in their fifties or sixties and she had begun to realize her parents weren't quite as old as she had always thought. Her father was only forty and she thought he probably still had time to become a true rancher—although time and money were not the same thing.

"You don't have to worry about Kurt," she said, changing the subject. "I've already grilled him."

"I bet you have."

"You can tell he really loves Alma because he stuck around even after that. He even said he'd be supportive if she wanted to go to school."

Her father looked surprised. "Does Alma want to do that?"

"No," Enid said. "I just kinda hope she does some time."

Her father grunted in acknowledgement but Enid couldn't tell if he was approving or dismissing her hopes for Alma. Enid was the only one in her family who had ever gone to college. Her mother had graduated from high school at least, but her father had left when he was fourteen and his family ran out of money.

"Soon, you'll be getting married too," Enid's father said.

"I hope not," she said. "I mean, eighteen seems a bit young to me, nineteen too." This was how old Alma was.

"Yeah. You might be right. Your mom and I were nineteen when we—actually I had just turned twenty—but your mom was nineteen when we got married. I don't know if more years would've made me any smarter. Might have made her, though." Enid's father looked over at her. "Not that I'd change it of course. For you and Alma and Jenny. It was worth it."

Enid smiled. She made a conscientious effort not to be annoyed by the fact that her father had mused about her marriage when he almost certainly knew she would not be getting married anytime soon. It wasn't that hard though. Having his oldest daughter getting married was making her father sentimental and more talkative than usual, both of which Enid enjoyed.

"It's not much," her father said, pulling off the highway into what could only be called a trailer park if one were feeling generous. It was, instead, a large field of yellow grass with three trailers scattered across it. Her father's trailer was white and orange and had a mailbox in front of it that said seventy-seven even though Enid had no idea where the other seventy-six houses that came before it were. This was her first time at her father's new place and she noticed that it was smaller than any of the places before it, not that they had been very big either.

"I like it," she said. "I like the orange."

From inside the trailer, Enid wondered if there could really be more room for her here than at her mother's house. The trailer was so narrow, she was pretty sure she could stretch her arms out and touch either side, although she refrained from doing this as it would have been rude. To the left of the door was a small kitchen and to the right was a bed. Beyond the kitchen was a small bathroom. The only pieces of furniture were the bed, a wooden chair, and a closet, which potentially didn't count as it was built into the wall. Enid put her suitcase down and went to open the closet, but was stopped by her father, who shot out a hand to hold the closet door shut.

"I was thinking I'd hang up my dress for the wedding up," she said.

"The closet's a little musty. I'll go hang it from the shower curtain in the bathroom. That'll be better." Her father took the dress from her, returning from the bathroom with a confused look on his face. "That dress long enough, you think?"

"Yes."

He raised his eyebrows. "All right, then."

Enid shut the suitcase and slid it underneath the bed to get it out of the way. She wondered where her father expected her to sleep, or even sit. Seeing her standing awkwardly by the bed, her father gestured for her to sit down as he went to the fridge.

"You hungry? All I have really is baloney and corn, but I could… I dunno. I guess I should've gone shopping."

"It's fine." Enid said. "I actually packed a sandwich for the bus and haven't eaten it yet." She pulled a paper bag out of her backpack and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of the bag. She had cut it into triangular pieces like her mother used to when she was a kid. "You want some?"

Her father shook his head, pulled two beers from the fridge, and handed one to her, before sitting down in the chair opposite from her. Enid looked around, feeling awkward. In the car, she and her could look at the road or listen to the radio, but in a cramped house, facing one another, conversation seemed like a necessity. She often found it somewhat challenging to keep a conversation going with her father. He wasn't a big talker. She was, though, and he was such an intent listener, she could usually think of things to say eventually, knowing he'd be interested—or at least pretend to be—no matter what she said. Recently, she had been shocked to learn he knew who Gloria Steinem was. When she had expressed this, her father had said, "Well, you told me about her last year, didn't you."

Now, though, she was feeling more and more pressure to mention Jack and wishing she had done so in the car when neither she nor her father would have had to make eye contact. Then again, he may have crashed the car, so maybe it was good she hadn't said anything.

"Jenny wants me at Mom's by seven tomorrow," she said. "I hope that's ok."

Her father nodded. Enid had known it would be. Seven was a bit early for her, but her father usually woke up at dawn or earlier.

"She says she's gonna do my makeup and hair and stuff," she said. "I'm a little nervous about what she'll do to me actually."

Her father smiled slightly, but didn't say anything. Enid had often wondered if her father could be described as "comfortable with silence," or if it was more appropriate to say that he just didn't give a shit—about conversational expectations or most other humans in general.

"Dad," she said. "Do you still go fishing with your friend, Jack?"

"No," her father said, looking down and putting his hand to the back of his neck, as if feeling where Jack's hand had been all those years ago. "He died a few months back."

Enid felt a weight drop into her stomach. "I'm so sorry, Dad."

"Yeah, well." Her father shook his head slowly. "Why are you asking me about him now?"

"I just hadn't heard about him in a while," Enid said, even though her father never talked about Jack. "I heard about a man in Texas who maybe was attacked or something."

"Well, that wouldn't've been Jack. He had a tire blow up in his face."

This fit the cover-up story Mark had talked about.

"That's awful," Enid said. "I'm so sorry."

"Why would you think he got attacked anyway? Just 'cause some guy got himself killed don't mean it was Jack."

"Yeah, I know," Enid said, noting her father's use of the phrase, "got himself killed." She noticed her father's hands shaking and thought his vehemence just proved that Jack "getting himself killed" was exactly what had happened—in her father's mind at least. "It just, it sounded like what had happened to this guy in Texas was like what happened with that guy Earl you told me about."

Her father kept his head down, refusing to look at her. His fists clenched and unclenched, one of them resting on his knee, the other curled around his beer.

"You remember telling me that?"

Her father didn't answer, but he squeezed his fist so tightly that his beer bottle broke in his hand. Beer shot everywhere, some of it getting in Enid's eyes. When she opened them, she saw that her father's fist was still closed around the broken glass as blood trickled down his arm.

"Oh my god," she said, jumping up. "Do you have cloth somewhere? Something clean?"

"I got it," her father said, standing up and finally releasing the glass into the kitchen sink. He ran water over his open palm then disappeared to the bathroom, returning several minutes later with his hand wrapped in gauze.

"I'm trying to say something about Jack," Enid said. "I think it's important."

Her father stood clutching the kitchen counter with his good hand. He looked like he wanted to jump over it and attack her, but was holding onto it instead to keep him from coming any closer.

Enid thought that maybe, if she and her father could just talk openly for once—about Jack and Earl and Rich and everything else—it might change something for him, which is why she kept going, despite feeling that she was putting them both in danger.

"I often wondered if you and Jack were—"

Enid stopped short as her father came bounding forth from behind the counter and grabbed her hard by the arm. She could feel his fingers pressing painfully into her. She pulled away and pushed past him, retrieving her dress from the bathroom, before coming back and pulling her suitcase out from under the bed. Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she gave her father a final look before leaving the trailer. As she began her walk toward the highway, she heard him following behind her.

"Where are you going?" he asked, some—but not all—of the anger dissipating from his voice.

"I'm going to Mom's," Enid said without looking back.

"And how do you plan to get there?"

"I'm going to hitchhike."

"You can't do that. That's dangerous."

"So is staying here."

"How do you figure that?"

Now, her father had caught up to her and she felt his hand on her arm again, softer this time. She turned around and looked up at him. The anger in her eyes seemed to startle him and he let go of her, taking a step backward. She had known she was pushing against something powerful, some deep-seated need for secrecy, some fear, but she had felt it was necessary. If she was right about him and Jack—and she was almost sure she was—she thought he'd need to talk about what had happened eventually. She worried about what would happened to him if he never did. She had also known he would be angry, but actually experiencing that anger had frightened her and being frightened made her mad.

"I figure," she said. "That if I say to you what I'm about to say—and you know what it is, obviously—I won't be safe here."

Enid watched her father put his hands behind his back, as if showing her that he wouldn't do anything to her—at least not right away.

"I'm saying that I've always wondered if you and Jack were together and I heard about a man in Texas who was beaten to death for being gay and I immediately thought of Jack and then I thought of that horrible story about Earl and Rich that you had the gall to tell me when I was sixteen because you obviously knew the same thing about me that I know about you and I heard about this man in Texas because I'm gay—just so there's no confusion over what we're talking about—and my friends are gay and their friends are gay and we all talk about this kind of thing because gay people who don't fucking hate themselves talk to each other and you should try it some time." Enid stopped to catch her breath. She had been staring straight at her father, but had been so agitated that she hadn't really seen him. Now she did. His face was impassive, but his body suddenly looked weak and brittle, like he might crumple and fall to the ground at any minute, like he might just disintegrate. "And if what I just said is true and if you and Jack had a relationship, then I am so sorry, Dad. I'm so so sorry."

Enid's father's eyes widened and he rocked back and forth slightly, his cheeks sucked in like he was biting on them. Finally he said calmly, "I don't want you hitchhiking. I'll drive you to your mother's."

For the first fifteen minutes of the ride, neither Enid nor her father talked. She blinked back tears, trying hard not to actually cry. When her father spoke, she was so surprised it took her a moment to process what he had said.

"Are you careful?" he asked.

"With… with what?"

"With how you are. Do you flaunt it or…"

"Yeah," Enid said. "Yeah, Dad. I _flaunt_ it."

"People know?"

"Some people do. I'm part of the gay group at school."

"You'll have to quit that."

"What?"

"It's not safe, Enid."

Enid looked at her father. He was gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands, making blood seep through the bandage on his hand as the wheel put pressure on the cut. He seemed more terrified than angry.

"Dad, it's not like it was before. Things are changing. It's not so dangerous for people to know now."

"So you come here and assume Jack was killed for… for being like you and then you tell me that it's not dangerous for people to know. You wanna stick by that, Enid?"

Enid's father began to grip the steering wheel so hard that he pulled it from side to side.

"Dad, pull over," she said. "Pull over, Dad. This is dangerous."

Her father jerked the wheel to the right and slammed on the breaks, stopping the car.

"You're quitting that group," he said.

"No I'm not."

"God damn it, Enid. Yes you are."

"It's important to me."

"It's important to you to associate with people like that?"

"Like what? Like _me_? Yeah, that's important to me."

"Enid, you can't… I can't let… Do you want to die?"

"I'd rather die than live like you."

Enid's father looked like he might cry, something she had never seen before, even on the day he moved all his stuff out of their old house and told her and her sisters that he and their mother were separating, which was the saddest she had seen him. Until now. Slowly, as if it took all his effort, he opened his car door and stepped out. Then he walked several yards in front of the car and crouched down. Enid watched him rub both of his hands over the surface of dirt and thought about how bad it must be for his injured hand. After several minutes, he stood up, brushed his hands off on his pants and climbed back into the car.

"I'm sorry," Enid whispered.

Without looking at her, he reached his hand toward her and squeezed her shoulder gently. Then he pulled his hand back and started the car. He didn't say anything else the rest of the ride, not even when they arrived at Enid's mother's house.

"I guess I'll see you at the wedding," Enid said.

Her father nodded, again without looking at her. When she left the car, he didn't drive off right away, waiting, she thought, to see someone let her in the front door. Once her step-father, Monroe, opened the door and Enid stepped inside, she glanced out the window, expecting to see her father driving away, but he remained sitting there, the car idling.

"Enid? Is everything all right?" Monroe asked.

"Yeah." Enid wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath as her mother rounded the corner.

"Enid? What are you doing here?"

"Can I stay here tonight?"

"Did something happen with your father?"

"Oh you know." Enid tried to sound casual. "He's so quiet. I could only take sitting there in silence for so long."

"Right, um, come in."

Enid heard her youngest brother, Daniel, who was three, crying as she walked in.

"He has a fever," her mother said.

Platters of food and floral centerpieces covered every inch of the dining room table. Pillows and a blanket were set up on the couch and Enid had to step over toy trains and building blocks to get to Jenny's room, where both Jenny and Alma were sitting on the bed. Alma's wedding dress hung in the open closet.

"We could probably set you up on the floor," her mother said. "Or Jenny and Alma could share the bed and you could sleep on the couch. Or…"

Her mother trailed off as Daniel ran into the room and buried his running noise in her dress. She looked down at Daniel and then back up at Enid with a look that told Enid she was stressed enough already without having to make room for another person. Enid was about to explain what had happened—or as much as she could without revealing more than she thought her father could stand—when there was a loud crash outside, followed by her five-year-old brother Michael's wailing and Monroe's swearing.

"It's all right, Michael," Monroe said. Then more quietly, "Shit. Shit." Then louder, "Alma, could you come in here?" He was speaking to Enid's mother, not her sister, Alma Jr.

All four of the women left the room to find Michael standing in a pile of crackers, a heavy wooden board resting painfully on his little feet. Alma turned to Alma Jr. and handed her Daniel, whom she had been holding, before bending down to comfort Michael and clean up the mess around him. Enid's mother looked up at her again, exasperated.

"I can stay with Dad," she said and walked back out the front door where her father was still waiting for her in his truck.

"Enid, wait."

Enid turned to see Alma Jr. behind her. "Is everything all right? With Daddy?"

"It's fine. You just worry about getting married tomorrow," Enid said. She stepped forward to give Alma a one-armed hug and kiss Daniel on the forehead. "I'll see you back here tomorrow."

She smiled at Alma to reassure her that everything was ok, before walking away and hopping back in her father's car.

"There's no room for me there," she said. "I know you drove all this way and driving back with me is ridiculous and—"

"Have to drive myself back anyway," her father said, beginning a three-point turn.

When they got back to her father's place and stepped through the door, Enid began to laugh.

"What?" her father asked.

"There's much less space here than at Mom's. But it's quieter here—the boys were causing all sorts of trouble—and Mom really didn't want me there, I don't think." Enid paused. "You might not either but you're less obvious about it."

"I want you here," her father said.

For dinner that night they had baloney sandwiches and canned corn. Her father laid out a bed roll in the kitchen, but when Enid went to settle down there, he told her to take the bed.

"It's fine, Dad. You take the bed." She thought of making an old man joke, but decided now was not the time, given all that had transpired.

"I'm used to sleeping on the ground. You take it. I already washed the sheets. No point in doing that if I'm just gonna sleep there."

"You know, a lot of people wash their sheets just for themselves, so they're not sleeping in their own filth."

"Well I'm not fancy like you, Enid. I wouldn't know about such things."

Enid laughed before growing serious. "I'm sorry, Dad, for what I said."

Her father grunted. "Take the damn bed and go to sleep," he said, but Enid saw him smile.

The next morning, she woke up to the smell of eggs and the sound of a static-y radio. She sat up groggily before collapsing back into the bed.

"Get up," her father said. "You can't sleep through your sister's wedding. I went out and got some eggs. I drank all the coffee but I can make more. And the shower's only got cold water this morning so that'll wake you right up."

Enid groaned and wrapped the covers around herself.

"Get your ass out of bed. I made you eggs and you're going to eat them."

The ceremony was beautiful. Her father walked Alma Jr. down the aisle and Enid smiled when she saw how enthralled Kurt was by the image of his bride walking toward him. Both Michael and Daniel served as ring-bearers with far more self-control than Enid had expected and just as much adorableness in their tiny little suits.

"It's almost enough to make you want kids," Alma's friend whispered to Enid. "Almost."

"I do want kids," Enid said.

"That's good because I don't see any way around it once you get married."

Enid decided that now was not the time to propose some type of exchange wherein this woman got to have unprotected sex with her husband and then fork over the resulting offspring to Enid and her partner, but laughed quietly to herself at the thought.

Enid was skeptical, perhaps even cynical, about the wisdom of getting married at nineteen—"at least wait until you've got that teen part off the back of your age," she had said to Mark—but found herself crying with happiness through the exchange of vows and then the first dance and then a fair amount of the rest of the reception.

"You work everything out with Daddy?" Alma asked her at one point.

"Yeah," Enid said even though she wasn't so much sure she and her father had worked things out as decided to ignore them.

"Why are you crying then?" Alma asked. "You know I'm not going anywhere. We'll still see each other."

"I'm just so happy for you," Enid said, which was entirely the truth.

That night, Enid went back to her father's place instead of staying with her mother as planned. No one on either side protested, although her mother did say, "I hope you don't feel like I ran you off yesterday." Even though Enid did feel this way, she assured her mother that she did not and that she was just taking advantage of the rare opportunity to spend time with her father—he was so frequently away from home on a roundup.

"Good wedding," Enid's father said when they arrived back at his trailer.

"It was."

Enid's father looked like he was waiting for her to say something else, but smiled when she didn't. He seemed somewhat amused by her presence, as if he were unsure what to do with her but enjoyed having her around nonetheless. Perhaps this was a narcissistic viewpoint, but Enid had always gotten the impression that her father appreciated her company and, after the divorce, that he missed it. As she got older, she became keenly aware of the fact that she and her father would probably not have gotten along were they not related. Her father often seemed befuddled by the topics that interested her, such as medieval literature, and she often struggled to discern what his interests even were. Still, she figured this was better than two individuals failing to get along precisely because they were related, which was how she had felt about her mother for many of her teen years.

There was so much that Enid wanted to say to her father, but she couldn't think of how to say any of it. She felt they had unfinished business to attend to. Even if she couldn't convince him to talk about Jack—and she was becoming more and more certain that she couldn't—she could at least make up for her outburst in the car, her declaration that she'd rather be dead than live like him. "I didn't mean it," she wanted to say, but couldn't. She had meant it, and still did. Remembering her father's head following that white truck in the distance, clearly worried that its occupants would see him talking to Jack and jump to all the right conclusions, Enid thought she'd rather let the men in the truck know exactly who and what she was than spend her whole life looking over her shoulder waiting for them to figure it out. She couldn't see any sense in preserving a life that wasn't truly her own or wasn't the one she was meant to be living. She couldn't imagine hiding like that for years. The sacrifice was too great. A life like that wasn't worth it.

This was what Enid wanted to say. Instead, she said, "Would your radio get the Broncos game? They always do a rebroadcast at night."

Her father confirmed that his radio would get the game and he and Enid spend the next hour getting drunk and listening to the Broncos come within inches of the end zone time and time again, only to have to settle for a field goal.

Finally, her father spoke. "I've never been able to figure you out, Enid."

Enid looked up from her beer, incredulous. As far as she was concerned, she was far easier to understand than her father. She wasn't hiding anything—not from other people and not from herself. "How so?" she asked.

Her father spread his arms out and then shrugged. The confusion was all encompassing. Then he said, "What do you want in life?"

"I don't know. To do some good. To be happy. Doesn't everyone want that?"

"No."

"What do you want then?"

"To be around."

Her father had responded far more quickly than Enid had expected.

"What's the point, though? If you're not happy, why bother?"

"The point? You're the point. You and Jenny and Alma Jr." Her father paused a moment, listening to the radio as the Broncos came within five yards of the goal line. It was more a formality than anything else. When they failed to score a touchdown, he hardly reacted. "And staying alive," he said. "That's just something you're supposed to do."

"But that's not really living," Enid said.

"Sure it is. Anyone who says different has had too much time to sit around and think about it."

" _I_ say different."

Enid's father just nodded. Clearly, to him, Enid was one of those people with too much time. With enough time to go to school and contemplate things that would never help her feed herself or start a family or pay for new transmission on a pickup.

"Right," she said. "I think I'll go to bed."

The next morning, Enid woke to the sound of running water. She had no idea what time it was as her father never seemed to have a clock in any of the homes he occupied. He was always more attuned to the sun and weather than the specific hour, just another way, Enid thought, that he lived unmoored from the rest of the world. As she became more aware of her surroundings, she realized the sound was coming from the bathroom and knew it couldn't be too late if her father was just showering now. She rose from the bed slowly, yawning, then pulled her suitcase out from under the bed. Everything was packed already, except for the pajamas she was wearing and the dress she had worn to the wedding, which she had hung back up in the bathroom the previous night. Reasoning that her father must have moved the dress to shower, she went to his closet to look for it. The dress was there, but what caught Enid's attention were two shirts—one plaid-checked one and one denim—wrapped one inside the other, like a shirt and lining. They were not hanging in the closet with the other shirts, but set apart, their hanger suspended from a nail on the back of the door, so the shirts were clearly visible every time the door was opened. Next to the nail was a glossy colored postcard of a mountain range at dusk, its peaks stained pink and purple and blue. Without a thought for privacy, Enid found her hand traveling to the thumb tack holding the card in place, intending to take it down and read the back.

"Jack and me were herding sheep up on that mountain in '63," her father said, making her jump. Realizing what she had been doing, Enid turned, expecting to see anger on her father's face. He looked calm, however, resigned and maybe even relieved. "That's how we discovered this thing."

"I'm sorry," Enid said. "I didn't mean… or, I did mean to look, but I wasn't thinking."

Her father shrugged his shoulders. He put a pan on his two-burner stove and began cracking eggs into it. A few minutes later, he handed Enid a plate with two fried eggs on it and a slice of tomato.

"I went to see Jack's parents, just after he died," he said. "His mother was kind but his old man was, well he was a way that I don't ever want to be to you."

Enid wasn't sure what to say to this. She decided to stay quiet and wait for her father to continue. He seemed to be feeling some compulsion to speak and she wanted to let him do so for as long as possible.

"There's a difference between being ashamed and being careful," he said. "Just because I want you to be careful, doesn't mean I'm ashamed of you. I could never be that. It's important to me that you know that."

Enid nodded.

"A father that's hateful to his children isn't right. I may not always know what's right and what's wrong, but I know that."

Enid bowed her head and watched her tears fall onto her eggs. Soon she realized that her father was no longer sitting across from her, but now standing next to her.

"Come here," he said, pulling her to her feet and wrapping his arms around her. Even though he had just gotten out of the shower, he already smelled like tobacco and horses. His shirt had clearly gone through several wears since its last wash.

"Dad," Enid said. "You and Jack. Is that something we can talk about?"

Her father took a step back, releasing her from the hug, but keeping a hand on each of her shoulders. "No," he said. "I don't think so."

"I wish it were."

"Sometimes a thing's a secret for so long, it's best to keep it that way."

"That doesn't make sense to me."

"It doesn't have to."

"Are you ashamed of it?"

Enid's father looked at her for a long time, before speaking.

"Sometimes I've been ashamed of myself."

"But not of Jack?" Enid asked.

Enid's father let go of her shoulders and looked down at the floor. When he looked up he was smiling slightly, but there were tears in his eyes. "Not anymore."

"You shouldn't be ashamed of yourself either, though."

"Perhaps. But a man can't help who is."

This was precisely Enid's point, but obviously her father was saying something different. Her father nodded as if this settled the matter, even though Enid had very little idea what he had meant. As she watched him clear his plate and begin washing the dishes, Enid thought about how strange it was—and how sad—that she and her father could share practically the same name—Enid and Ennis to match the two Almas—and the same secret and generally love each other—for Enid's part at least, more than she probably loved anyone else in the world, including her mother and sisters and brothers, which always made her feel tremendously guilty—and never really understand each other. Then again, maybe the fact that they were still trying after all these years said something positive.

"You almost finished there?" her father asked. "Thought I'd take you over to your mother's so you can visit before you go back to school."

"Oh," Enid said with some disappointment. "Yeah, ok."

"She'll be mad at one or both of us if you don't spend at least an hour over there. I'd love to keep you here." Enid's father winked at her. "But you're a very popular young lady."

"Yeah," Enid said. "You're right. About visiting her. Not the popular part."

They listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Emmylou Harris on the ride over.

"Don't you think Jenny sings a bit like Emmylou?" Enid asked.

"Mmm," her father said in agreement.

When they arrived at Enid's mother's house, he put the car in park and turned toward her, looking serious. "You understand that you can't," he began. "That I'd prefer you didn't tell your sisters about any of this."

"Of course."

Enid mimicked locking her lips and throwing away the key, a gesture that felt inappropriately flippant to her as soon as she did it. Her father just laughed, though, and reached out a handle to ruffle her hair—or try to anyway.

"What you got going on here?" he asked. "It's hard as a rock."

"Jenny sprayed enough hairspray on me yesterday to create a new hole in the ozone layer. I can't seem to wash it out."

"The ozone layer?"

"Yeah. They've been writing about it in the newspapers. We're polluting everything, I guess. Killing the earth."

"More of the same then."

"Exactly."

Enid's father put his hand back on top of her head.

"What's the point of it even?" he asked.

"The ozone layer?"

"Hairspray."

"It holds your hair in place."

"Looks the same as it always does. To me anyway."

"Right? That's what I told Jenny, but she insisted." Enid smiled. She thought her father was stalling a bit. She knew she was. "I guess I should go," she said, putting a hand on the door handle.

"Guess so."

"All right." Enid hugged her father, bumping her elbow painfully on the steering wheel in the process. "Bye, Dad."

"Bye, sweetheart."

Enid ran up her mother's front steps, then turned around to wave at her father. She wondered if they'd ever talked about this—Jack, the gay group at school, all of it—ever again and if the conversation they just had was good enough. She was hearing the phrase, "Good, but not good enough," a lot lately and thought it applied here. She wanted to change the emphasis though.

"Not good enough," she whispered to herself. "But good."


End file.
